George Soros is Chairman of Soros Fund Management and Chairman of the Open Society Foundations. A pioneer of the hedge-fund industry, he is the author of many books, including The Alchemy of Finance, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: The Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means, and The Tragedy…read more

Sustaining Ukraine’s Breakthrough

NEW YORK – Following a crescendo of terrifying violence, the Ukrainian uprising has had a surprisingly positive outcome. Contrary to all rational expectations, a group of citizens armed with not much more than sticks and shields made of cardboard boxes and metal garbage-can lids overwhelmed a police force firing live ammunition. There were many casualties, but the citizens prevailed. This was one of those historic moments that leave a lasting imprint on a society’s collective memory.

How could such a thing happen? Quantum mechanics offers a fitting metaphor. Physicists know that subatomic phenomena can manifest themselves as both particles and waves; similarly, human beings may behave both as individual particles and as components of a larger wave. In other words, the unpredictability of historical events like those in Ukraine has to do with an element of uncertainty in human identity.

People’s identity is made up of individual elements and elements of larger units to which they belong, and peoples’ impact on reality depends on which elements dominate their behavior. When civilians launched a suicidal attack on an armed force in Kyiv on February 20, their sense of representing “the nation” far outweighed their concern with their individual mortality. The result was to swing a deeply divided society from the verge of civil war to an unprecedented sense of unity.

Whether that unity endures will depend on how Europe responds. Ukrainians have demonstrated their allegiance to a European Union that is itself hopelessly divided, with the euro crisis pitting creditor and debtor countries against one another. That is why the EU was hopelessly outmaneuvered by Russia in the negotiations with Ukraine over an Association Agreement.

True to form, the EU under German leadership offered far too little and demanded far too much from Ukraine. Now, after the Ukrainian people’s commitment to closer ties with Europe fueled a successful popular insurrection, the EU, along with the International Monetary Fund, is putting together a multibillion-dollar rescue package to save the country from financial collapse. But that will not be sufficient to sustain the national unity that Ukraine will need in the coming years.

I established the Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine in 1990 – before the country achieved independence. The foundation did not participate in the recent uprising, but it did serve as a defender of those targeted by official repression. The foundation is now ready to support Ukrainians’ strongly felt desire to establish resilient democratic institutions (above all, an independent and professional judiciary). But Ukraine will need outside assistance that only the EU can provide: management expertise and access to markets.

In the remarkable transformation of Central Europe’s economies in the 1990’s, management expertise and market access resulted from massive investments by German and other EU-based companies, which integrated local producers into their global value chains. Ukraine, with its high-quality human capital and diversified economy, is a potentially attractive investment destination. But realizing this potential requires improving the business climate across the economy as a whole and within individual sectors – particularly by addressing the endemic corruption and weak rule of law that are deterring foreign and domestic investors alike.

In addition to encouraging foreign direct investment, the EU could provide support to train local companies’ managers and help them develop their business strategies, with service providers remunerated by equity stakes or profit-sharing. An effective way to roll out such support to a large number of companies would be to combine it with credit lines provided by commercial banks. To encourage participation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) could invest in companies alongside foreign and local investors, as it did in Central Europe.

Ukraine would thus open its domestic market to goods manufactured or assembled by European companies’ wholly- or partly-owned subsidiaries, while the EU would increase market access for Ukrainian companies and help them integrate into global markets.

I hope and trust that Europe under German leadership will rise to the occasion. I have been arguing for several years that Germany should accept the responsibilities and liabilities of its dominant position in Europe. Today, Ukraine needs a modern-day equivalent of the Marshall Plan, by which the United States helped to reconstruct Europe after World War II. Germany ought to play the same role today as the US did then.

I must, however, end with a word of caution. The Marshall Plan did not include the Soviet bloc, thereby reinforcing the Cold War division of Europe. A replay of the Cold War would cause immense damage to both Russia and Europe, and most of all to Ukraine, which is situated between them. Ukraine depends on Russian gas, and it needs access to European markets for its products; it must have good relations with both sides.

Here, too, Germany should take the lead. Chancellor Angela Merkel must reach out to President Vladimir Putin to ensure that Russia is a partner, not an opponent, in the Ukrainian renaissance.

So if Tea Partiers hate Obama we should not wait until the elections and express it with our vote. We should riot like Ukrainians. The US and Europe certified the elections of 2010. And the government offered early elections, but the thugs on the street refused. Those thugs in Kiev have no legitimacy. They were not elected. Russia should assume the government of Ukraine until elections. Read more

Read Mr. Mr. Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya' alternative view of Mr. Soros' apologetics, disguised as platitudinous chatter, for the American 5 billion dollar investment in the illegal overthrow of a duly elected government!http://www.mintpressnews.com/road-moscow-goes-kiev-coup-detat-threatens-russia/180712/StephenKMackSDRead more

At this point, sustaining the Ukrainian breakthrough, as Soros argues, is not the realpolitik issue.

The central issue is how to sustain the breakthrough without avoiding antagonizing the Russians.

Crimea and the ethnic Russian enclave will not inevitably accept the sovereign rule of the Ukrainians; and without political guarantees a real breakthrough is not feasible – i.e. Crimea will breakout! Read more

one admires the sheer neck of Mr Soros to start writing "Ukraine, with its high-quality human capital and diversified economy, is a potentially attractive investment destination" before the dead are even cold. but of course, this is what the whole thing is about, making Ukraine "attractive" to wealthy Western investors, which Mr Yanukovich was not happy to do. the extent to which we now decide that democracy is only democracy when it gives the West the leaders it desires is a chilling geopolitical development, and i suspect it will bring some unthought of chickens home to roostRead more

I agree with the writer the the situation in Ukraine is a chance for a new beginning, but I find the article one sided.It seems to ignore that a large population of the Ukraine is Russian speaking and feel closer to Russia than to Europe.It is a precarious situation which could lead to a breakup or even military confrontation that could explode into a much larger conflict if we do not evaluate and solve the problem with sensitivity and a new vision.There is basically no region, country or even city which is not comprised of very different, many times hateful fractions, only kept together by prosperity, or a larger force suppressing their separatism.As the global crisis is cutting deeper, those "external" forces, "sweetening" keeping these very shaky alliances are exposed and easily incited into unrest, or even revolution.We have been seeing it all through the Middle East, in South America, Thailand, now in the Ukraine, and this process is unlikely to stop as the global crisis seems unsolvable.The solution both for the fragile situations like in the Ukraine, and for the global crisis is the same.We have to start viewing the global world as the name suggest, global, integral, in other words interconnected and interdependent.Instead of thinking in terms of isolation, separation, exploiting the situation for self-calculating purposes, we need to see a single, united system comprised of many, different, unique parts, where each part could insert its uniqueness into the whole building a beautiful mosaic that is quantitatively much more evolved then the same picture where the parts are separated.Instead of competition, opposition, oppression, exploitation we need complementing cooperation.Human existence in a mutual, global, integral way could break through into a dimension we haven't even dreamed about before.At present we are killing ourselves as cancer cells as we cannot even fathom working together above and despite our differences, rejection, even hatred.We cannot delete, wipe out what is separating us but we can learn how to build something mutually above it and the attraction of the prosperity, safety, peace and sustainability in such a state is unprecedented, unheard of.So in the case of the Ukraine instead of trying to meddle in their business, trying to exploit the situation for any personal or national or even regional gain we should think about how to use this unique opportunity to build a bridge in between Europe and Russia, and all the other neighboring nations given the Ukraine's unique position. Read more

Is this one of those tricks where somebody writes a sorry and signs soros name, because what you see in the ukraines street will be in every nations streets, unless you have some kind of controls that will stop the biggest financial sell off in the history of the markets, global markets to prevent the bankruptcy of your global system, starting with any kind of energy stocks, and global banks holding the debt of that energy complex, from the day of the beast of the fields, yea I'm talking technology beast of the fields, a new fiery law of magnetic mechanical physics, that has something to say about how things are done on this earth, a new class of self powered permanent field/inducted field motors, that use repulsion of like permanent fields for motion along with inducted fields to perpetuate that motion, that are charged and discharged in timed mechanical sequences,turning an axle for free with no external costs no fossil fuels needed, that's a pretty big deal right there, come up with a plan earthman to save yourself for the day coming upon the whole face of the earth, the visitation Read more

Joschka Fischer
laments the fate of the European Union in the wake of the latest round of the Greek drama.

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